


Wastelands

by Sonora



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (for Mad Max anyway), Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3956644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herc's got one goal for the end of the world; make sure his son survives it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Umm... not sure how to tag this, or what style I'm using here, or what's going on. And yes, I owe a bunch of other fic updates. But we saw Fury Road last night and I kept thinking about how Herc and Chuck would fare in Mad Max Australia. 
> 
> Also, I'm not sure what the extent of the environmental damage is supposed to be in the Mad Max series. There are plenty of places in Oz that are that shitty (they did film at least the second and third movie on location) without any additional problems, but it seemed a bit more decayed in Fury Road. Whatever. I'm going with it.
> 
> Oh, and go see Fury Road. Fucking amazing.

Their story begins much the same here; a Bell Kiowa, a nuke, a little boy shivering in his uncle’s arms on a cot in a makeshift shelter at the military base in Alice Springs, screaming at his father. _Why couldn’t you save her?_

But then, it doesn’t begin the same.

Because here, there are no kaijuu. Humans become their own monsters.

The petrol runs out before the food does. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. There’s plenty of green in Alice; the wasteland beyond has always been. Herc learned about desert warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, just like most of the other Australians and Americans stationed there with him. There are camels. There are guns. There is water.

They should have been alright. A good place to hold out, until the world puts itself back together.

Except the world doesn’t seem to have much interest in repairing itself; the last transmissions from the sat-comms, before the other transmitting stations go dark, confirm that. The collapse of the energy infrastructure is total. Even the nukes stop launching for lack of power.

But that’s far too clinic an analysis for what comes.

The first wave of refugees from the coastal areas - soft fuckers, with so little regard for the land that they built shipping channels through the reefs and never did learn how to manage the controlled burns that might have saved their forests - are manageable. They get ‘em fed, put ‘em to work, and while they don’t like living under martial law, that’s just too fucking bad. The rest of the civilians in Alice don’t like it much either, but it’s kept them alive for the past few months, so nobody much argues.

So it works, at first. Herc’s a sergeant, an older brother, a father. He has a place in things, a mission, orders to follow. Except he’s already proven to himself which is more important, which role can be abandoned and which he will fight to keep with everything he has, and the next waves of refugees haven’t shown up yet.

When they come, that’s when things start to go to shit.

The nuke attacks at Sydney and Canberra irradiated the land. Fall-out is killing the forests, desertification slowly creeping across the once-rich Blue Mountains. That’s what they say, the next batch, who come with coughs and radiation burns and blood on their lips that the docs shake their heads at and say there’s no helping. They die quickly; Chuck, the base commander decides, is old enough to help dig the graves. 

He cuddles into Scott’s lap at night, in the small barracks room they all share, Herc spared a few square meters of private space on account of his family. He won’t look at Herc, will barely talk to him, and Scott’s face is a picture of guilt as he rocks the boy to sleep.

“He still loves you,” Scott says one night. “He just misses his mum.”

“No. He blames me for her.”

There’s a stray animal problem in Alice. Packs of wild dogs, that sort of thing. Teams from the base go out sometimes, shoot them, bring them back - no point in the meat going to waste, everyone figures. Herc never tells Chuck what it is that’s served in the mess, but the boy probably knows. He’s clever like that. There are a few that are allowed to live, working dogs mostly, or dogs that can become working dogs. One of the civilians from the first wave came with a bulldog - female, and pregnant. The pup is two months old when Herc lets Chuck pick it out, and it’s four months when they bring it home. 

It’s another needy body in their already tight space, a strain on Herc and Scott’s food ration, but Max makes Chuck smile and both brothers agree that it’s more than worth it. 

(There’s a stray Aboriginal problem too. They drift in from the desert, looking for alcohol, for drugs, banished by their tribal leaders, and while they’ve always been there, the alcohol’s dried up with the petrol and it turns out an Abo in withdrawal is worse than one that’s drunk. Herc’s not on the team that takes care of that problem, but Scott is. And Scott never went to basic training; he was visiting Chuck’s school that day, filling in for Herc at Career Day by talking to the kids about his exciting job as an architect. He says he’s okay, but Herc can mark the days he has to pull the trigger by the look in his eyes, and it’s heartbreaking.) 

The next wave of refugees come, and the next, and the next, well, they’re not as sick, but they’re messed up in other ways. Spikes welded to broken down cars, rugby padding reconfigured into armor, shredded clothing and strange scars. It’s getting bad out there, some of them say. Some break down at the sight of water being held out to them, or the military uniforms that, while patched and faded now, are at least clean. A few don’t say anything. Others get violent.

Herc flew a gunship in Afghanistan. A weapon, that, with rotary blades affixed to the roof. He flew it, and he used it.

Shooting people up close is so much worse. Where you can see the blood. Where they don’t always go down on the first - or fifth - shot.

Resources are strained. They can’t take whole groups in. Just a few, sometimes. Sometimes none. Patrol teams get the word about who can come, and who has to be turned away. Families start getting denied, up over the protests of the junior officers at morning stand-up - protests that get heated some days, protests that end the morning the commander shoots one of the most vocal, a young American cadet. _Becket_ \- it says on his name tape, - bleeds out on the briefing room floor, everyone forbidden to help.

The point’s made.

Herc starts to form his own plans.

Plans he puts into motion the day the quartermaster comes to him and tells him that since Chuck’s twelve now, he’s old enough to be put to work. “He’ll be staying with the other boys in the main barracks,” Herc is told. 

“I already put him to bed,” Herc replies softly, and points back to the only bed in the room, a double, that the three of them have been sharing since Sydney. “I’ll bring him by in the morning before patrol, yeah?”

There’s a flicker of regret in the quartermaster’s eyes, but it vanishes quickly. Alice, they’ve all been told, is heaven compared to the open wasteland, but even here, compassion is in short supply. “Get him there by sun-up, Hansen, or it’s on your arse.”

“Thanks, mate,” he says, and locks the door.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Chuck asks, very quiet, soft, like he’s forgotten he’s supposed to be mad at his old man.

“Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

Herc wasn’t stationed here before, but he’s made friends in the time he’s been here, reconnected with a few old mates from the Afghanistan days. One of the best, Pentecost, a big bloke on loan from the RAF, with the shitty luck to be stuck out here when the bombs started dropping, has the keys to the vehicle yard. There’s a limited supply of patrol, Herc knows, thanks to Pentecost, held in reserve in case things get bad, for those weeks when some biker gang shows up wanting nothing more than blood. 

They wait until after midnight.

It’s fantastic, how many gas cans will fit in the back of a Humvee.

Nobody’s tried to leave Alice yet, so Herc’s not sure of what to expect - in response, or from the road. They aren't followed, though, and maybe that makes sense. Three mouths that don't need to be fed anymore. It's on them to take care of themselves now. On Herc, to ensure his family survives. 

They head north, deeper into the interior. They find themselves a nice abandoned cattle farm, one with a wind-driven well pump, living vegetation, kangaroos and rabbits plentiful, and get themselves set up quite neatly. 

For a few months, it seems like everything’s going to be okay.

For a few months.

And then one of the gangs finds them.

The attack is swift and brutal. It begins mid-afternoon, Max running in the house and yipping for help. It ends late in the evening, the house burning behind them, twelve dead bodies inside. Chuck killed the last one himself. Herc has to pry the shotgun out of his son’s nerveless hands and Chuck pukes all over his shirt before bursting into tears.

“We should go,” Scott says, kneeling beside Herc, voice thick with an emotion Herc can’t place.

“In a moment,” Herc replies. It’s the first time Chuck’s let his father hold him in almost two years, and Herc’s damn well going to savor it. 

Whatever the reason. 

When he’s done, though, when he pulls away to wipe roughly at his eyes with the back of a bloody sleeve, Herc says what he has to.

“That bastard chose to attack us, to attack you and your family. You did exactly what you had to, and I’m proud of you.”

Chuck looks gutted. “Dad...”

Herc takes a firm hold of his arm, shaking him a little. “You’re a Hansen, Chuck, and this is war. Us Hansens, we do what we have to to survive, and we don’t apologize for it. We sure as fuck don’t cry about it. You understand me? Stop crying, and don’t you dare feel guilty about what you did here tonight. That’s an order.”

Still sniffling, Chuck nods. 

“That’s my boy,” Herc says, kisses the top of his boy’s head, and lets him go. “Go find Max. We’re leavin’.”

Scott, watching from the side of the Humvee (he’s nicknamed Lucky Seven, for fuck only knows what reason), shakes his head. “Where are we gonna go Herc? Those guys...”

“We keep heading north, to the coast, where it’s green,” Herc tells him, not sure if it’s the truth or even the best course of action, but Scott needs him right now. “It’s the desert that’s makin’ people crazy. We get out of it, we’re good as gold.”

The well was destroyed in the attack, so they can’t fill their water tank before leaving.

It’ll be okay, Herc tells himself. It’ll be okay. As long as his son’s alive, it’ll be okay.

+++++

Chuck can barely remember the world before. How it was, who was in it, who they were. Dad’s still got a photo of Mum somewhere, tucked deep into a jacket pocket, but Chuck hasn’t looked at it in years. She’s gone, just like so many other people, and there’s no point in trying to remember her. Sometimes, despite what Dad thinks, Chuck’s glad she’s gone.

She’s better as a memory, sweet and soft and so perfect. 

She wouldn’t have lasted a week.

Chuck, on the other hand, Chuck grew up here in the wasteland. He was eleven when the nukes hit. Now, he’s maybe eighteen or seventeen or maybe even nineteen, but he’s made it this far, survived the wasteland this long. Thrived in it, even. He doesn’t hate it, he’s not afraid of it, it doesn’t intimidate him. It is what it is; violence incarnate; home.

Still, there are days when he has regrets. He tries not to, tries to be like Dad, brave and unflinching, unworried about the killing and strong against the people that want to take what’s theirs. Chuck tries not to remember the faces of the men he’s killed, lives he’s taken or those he’s failed to save, but there are two that stand out in his mind, no matter what he does.

The first is that biker he shot, ages ago, the first bloke he ever killed. He remembers the way the blood spray hit him, how afraid he was when he pulled the trigger, how he couldn’t stop crying until Dad gave him an order, and everything just... quieted.

The second is Uncle Scott.

Uncle Scott, the day he went crazy from hunger and tried to kill Max. Dad had been gone for almost a week, taken Lucky and their hunting rifle and gone off on a hunt. Chuck had gotten himself sick, something spoiled in their food supply, and was so weak he could barely stand, much less totter out of their cave to take a painful piss once a day. But there Scott was, knife to Max's throat, holding the dog down as his little body squirmed and fought and...

It had been all Chuck could manage, to scramble back and get the pistol Dad had left for him.

He’d burned his uncle’s body, after letting Max have his fill. Chuck considered it himself, but Dad had always been adamant about that being a line they would not cross. And when Dad gave orders, Chuck obeyed. Burning seemed the best way to keep himself to it.

He hadn’t cried at the time. But, a day later, belly full of kangaroo jerky, Chuck had watched his father sit by the remains of the fire and weep, and it had been almost more than he could bear.

“You’re a Hansen!” he yelled at Dad. “I had to, I had to kill him! Stop crying! You can’t cry for him!”

Dad had hit him. He hit back. The fight went to the ground, and then into the ashes, embers down in there still warm enough to scorch Chuck’s back. His father’s anger evaporated immediately, and the next touch was gentle again. Dad pulled him free, took him back to the cave to wash the burns out. 

“They aren’t bad,” Dad murmured, fingers skittering across Chuck’s bare skin. “Won’t even scar, I reckon.”

“Dad, about Uncle Scott...”

“Hush. He was weak,” Dad told him gently, cupping his face with his hands. “You’re strong. Stronger than him, stronger than me. He was always going to die out here. Better, maybe, that it was family.”

The words were certain, but the expression on Dad’s face was pained, and Chuck felt something come over him, something he’d never felt before.

Chuck can’t remember who kissed who first. Only that it, and everything since, is worth killing for.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Chuck asks now, pushing his goggles down, taking the worn map out of the center console. Lucky’s been a bitch to maintain, but Chuck knows her systems inside and out, and so what if she guzzles gas like a cheap drunk? She’s a damn fine machine. Kept them alive a long time.

Dad shows him the screen on the ancient GPS handheld. “I’m sure.” 

Geography out east has shifted quite a bit, but in the west, it’s more stable, easier to navigate on the old world’s products. Dad says the satellites will all go dark, sooner or later, but the GPS net seems to still be functioning. They’d heard about their unit a year ago, but only recently managed to acquire it. Chuck had pried it from the last owner’s dead fingers himself. He’s rather proud of it.

Chuck waves a hand at the far horizon. Under the mid-morning sun, the ocean looks gray, listless. “There’s nothing out there. Just dead sand and water.”

“Pentecost wouldn’t lie. The Shatterdome’s here.”

“That last transmission was almost six months ago.” Chuck’s tried everything to get the shortwave working again, but it just won’t go. “How do we know he’s even still here? Still alive?”

“I fought with him in the old wars. He’ll still be alive.”

“But you said the old wars had rules.”

“Not as many as we pretended they did.” Dad throws their girl back into drive. “We’re going.”

“That an order, Dad?”

“If it turns into a shitshow, love, we’ll do what we always do.”

Chuck looks at his father, at the bulldog sleeping at his feet, at the road. “Go where we please and shoot anyone who gets in our way.”

Dad grunts, and checks the line on their water bottle before taking a swig. He passes it over to Chuck, fingers brushing suggestively. “Nothing comes between me and my boy,” he says.

Somewhat reassured, Chuck takes a mouthful for himself, pours a bit into Max’s dish, and recaps it carefully as the dog laps it eagerly up. _Not even death_ , he tells himself, in the silence of his own mind.

It’s a thought he takes comfort in, no matter where or when or how he is.

+++++

The Shatterdome exists here too, as do the jaegers, as do a lot of things.

Raleigh Becket is here, Yancy the cadet who died in Alice Springs, Raleigh out for a visit while Yancy was on summer ops. Herc meets him in Pentecost’s office, kneeling by Pentecost’s desk, silent since his brother was killed, the Hansens are told. He has his own story, but it crosses with Herc and Chuck’s at this moment and not a second sooner; suffice to say, he’s been warming Pentecost’s bed since Alice, and more recently, Mako Mori’s as well. 

(Mako’s is another story the Hansens’ touches first here, a girl rescued from slavers by Stacker and Raleigh and Luna and Tamsin. Luna and Tamsin are gone now, though, and it’s Stacker she calls _father_ because it pleases him to feel he still has family, and hers is long gone anyway.)

Herc doesn’t understand why Pentecost is in the business of keeping slaves now, but since Raleigh seems to be the only one, he lets it slide.

The Shatterdome - living quarters to gardens to jaeger bays - has been wrested from the bones of a vast industrial complex. Pentecost says, during the tour, that it used to be a refinery, but now they can harvest and process petrol here. All kinds of petrol, all kinds of petroleum products; Geiszler and Gottlieb, while far from experts on the subject, have been reverse-engineering everything from rubber to plastic to jet fuel for Pentecost’s jumphawk, since he rescued the two old-world scientists from the previous warlord’s iron-mining pits. Things are not recycled here, but created. 

Thus, the place has enemies, and this is where the kaijuu come in. Here, they’re a monstrous road gang from the eastern wastes that lie in wait for those who come to the Shatterdome, looking for fuel. The barter rates are egregious, but it keeps Pentecost’s warriors well-fed and fighting fit, the whole pathetically small product of the struggling western coast flowing, at some point, through his gates.

His is a kingdom of strategy, of politics and wider warfare. It bears little resemblance to the knife-in-hand life of the interior wastelands, and Herc says so, when they finally reach Pentecost’s living quarters, food and water brought with such speed and in such quantity, even Herc can’t hide his amazement.

“All this soft shit, Stacker, it’s going to get you killed. You lose your edge, the wasteland will get you.”

“That’s why I wanted you here, Sergeant Hansen. I’ve no one else with military experience. The only way we’re going to deal with that rabble out there is with discipline.”

“You brought no-one else from Alice with you?”

“Only Mako and the boy are left.”

There’s doubt in Chuck’s eyes, and Herc asks if they can sleep on it, give an answer in the morning. He’s not sure if he trusts this new version of his old comrade in arms, nor the cruelty that is sleeping just below the surface here. But the world is cruel now, and none of them are who they were or what they could have been. It's nothing to hold against the man. And the Shatterdome is defensible, foodstores solidly preserved and deeply hidden, and the designs of the war machines look highly promising. It's the best place they found by far, far beyond anything in the interior wastes, a place where Herc can keep his boy safe.

He thinks on it, while Pentecost’s silent boy shows them to a room. It’s open to the night breeze, and the bed is soft, and Herc couldn’t ask for much more.

Except that Raleigh steps up into the center of the room, hands trembling a little as he undoes the pins on his tunic’s shoulders and steps out of it, walking right for Herc.

Chuck has him on his back in a flash, head yanked back and the double barrel of his favorite sawed-on shotgun jammed right under the blond’s chin. “Oi! The only person who touches him is me, you got that?”

Raleigh looks at Herc with pleading eyes, and Herc steps forward to lay a hand on his furious son’s shoulder. “Pentecost likely ordered him to. A sweetener. If I stay, I get his boy too.”

“You already have a boy, Dad.” Chuck growls the last word, and looks up at Herc.

Too late, Herc sees Raleigh’s weight shift.

The fight is quick, brutal, and almost blindingly fast. Chuck’s a brawler, no mistake about that, just like his old man, but Raleigh’s had training in a far more nuanced fighting style, and it shows. He gets Chuck in a headlock, almost choking him out, clearly blinded to anything but the fight.

Until Herc cocks back the hammer on his pistol. Sites trained straight on Raleigh’s head.

Raleigh stops.

Both boys are breathing hard, skins shiny from sweat. But where Chuck’s body is hidden beneath sensible layers of loose, dusty desert rags, Raleigh’s is out and fully on display. He’s pale and soft, well-fed muscle under a faint network of geometric scars that could only be brands of some kind. Herc wonders if Pentecost is the one who marked him, or somebody else, but it’s just enough to tilt the unreality of Raleigh’s appearance back into this world. He’s gorgeous.

And then Herc thinks about what it would be like to taste his own boy’s skin after a bath, clean and smooth as Raleigh’s, no dirt or grease or blood between them.

That alone, that alone could be worth the price of admission to this place.

“Pentecost will punish you, if you come back without satisfying me, won’t he?” Herc asks, taking a knee beside him. Chuck glares, but Raleigh loosens, lets him go, head hanging low. Herc brushes the curve of his arse and looks at Chuck. “Reckon we could share him, eh, love?”

(And in the morning, when a flushed Raleigh tells Mako the story without saying a word, and Mako tells Pentecost, and Pentecost goes to find out if his old friend really is fucking his son, Herc and Chuck are still in bed together, their damned dog curled up at their feet, Raleigh’s toga still on the floor, where Chuck ordered him leave it. Herc pulls up to sitting, Chuck in his lap and gun trained at Pentecost’s forehead, and tells him exactly how this is going to work.

“Try to take him from me or get between us again, and I kill every last living person in this place,” Herc says.

Pentecost believes him.

"My boy had bruising on his neck this morning," he sneers back. "There will likewise be consequences if he's ever hurt again."

"Don't put him in my way and I won't," Chuck retorts.

And if Pentecost goes back to his own rooms after that and fucks Raleigh hard before breakfast, he doesn't think anyone can blame him. He can almost understand how Herc feels. He might not love Raleigh, not like he does Mako, but they've been together a long time; Pentecost is terribly fond of that sound Raleigh makes when he fills the boy with his seed. He'd be upset if he ever lost it.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umm... everyone's an asshole? But they're trying not to be?

Here, Raleigh’s story is no less cruel than it is when he is a jaeger pilot and Yancy is torn from his mind. Here, he still watches his brother die, but it’s a human holding the weapon that kills him. Here, it will still scar him for the rest of his life.

But Stacker Pentecost - an RAF Squadron Leader, not a Ranger nor Marshall - does not let him leave.

And that makes all the difference.

Pentecost is in the room, the morning Yancy is killed, and it’s Pentecost who takes Raleigh away from the body - drags him, straight out of the briefing room and back to his own meager lodgings. Better than the barracks bed Yancy and Raleigh had been sharing, and Raleigh half-wants to say so, but he just stares instead.

Yancy is dead.

The world has ended and his brother has left him alone in the ruins.

It’s so much worse than when Mom died last year.

“I’m sorry,” Pentecost says. “I’m so sorry, lad.”

Raleigh realizes he’s crying. 

He realizes that Pentecost is rubbing his back.

He lets himself fall into the big Brit’s arms, and sobs.

From that day on, Raleigh belongs to Stacker Pentecost, although neither one of them realize it for a while. Raleigh lives in his room and shares his bed - nothing sexual about it at first, there just isn’t enough room in Alice for everyone who’s there at the base to have their own bed. Squadron Leader Pentecost is a good man; takes good care of the boy who’s staying in his room. He always makes sure Raleigh has his fair share of the food and water that’s available, keeps him off the worst of the work details, protects him from the commander who’s slowly going mad under the pressure of keeping this many people alive under these sorts of odds. He doesn’t even demand that Raleigh speak to him, like the others do.

(It’s not that Raleigh stops talking, the moment Yancy’s body hits the ground, but after that, there doesn’t seem to be much point in _anything_ , communication included. What could he say that matters? Why would anyone listen to him? The Commander didn’t listen to Yancy, when he was telling him how wrong it was to leave children out there to die. Raleigh still says a few things for a little while, but then short sentences turning to one word answers, then to quiet shrugs and hand-waves. Easier, he finds it, to live in silence. When that happens, the afternoon Stacker asks him how his day is and he shakes his head, not wanting to say that he help burn a stack of bodies, Stacker nods and never asks him anything again. It probably contributes to the situation between them; in giving up his voice, Raleigh gives up control of his very flesh, but then, maybe that’s what he wanted.)

Raleigh, in turn, does what he can for Squadron Leader Pentecost. Sometimes it’s doing his laundry (on the days when such luxuries can be indulged) or making their bed, or fetching them food from the mess on the days when his benefactor comes back from patrol, numb and tired. Sometimes it’s holding him, offering him the quiet comfort of human contact.

One night - for no particular reason, or at least, none either of them will later remember - Raleigh takes it further. He’s been living in Squadron Leader Pentecost’s room for over a year now, and he is a teenager, and he never really got the chance to know what kind of man he is or who he likes, outside of the apocalypse. So Raleigh’s not sure if he’s gay or not, but he knows he owes his life to this man, and acts accordingly.

He pushes himself into Squadron Leader Pentecost’s arms that night in bed, and kisses him.

The response - a slap - is unexpected, to say the least. Raleigh recoils, hand on his cheek, a rare whine escaping from him, mind racing. If he’s displeased his benefactor, he’ll be back out in the barracks with the other boys, most of whom are going feral far faster than the adults and to the delight of the Commander, and they’ll rip him apart for the privilege he’s enjoyed thus far. So no, there’s no option to go back, to apologize, to beg forgiveness. 

Raleigh offered this. 

It can’t be rejected.

“Lad,” his benefactor begins, sharp but worried, and Raleigh doesn’t let him finish. He throws their thin, patched sheet off to slide in to swallow down Pentecost’s cock.

There’s nothing good about oral in a world where washings are few and far between. There are layers of foul-tasting sweat and grime between Raleigh and Pentecost, but Raleigh doggedly fights his gag reflex and keeps going. His saliva washes some of it away and it gets better, even if he has no idea what he’s doing. It feels right thought, offering this, doing this, and when Squadron Leader Pentecost winds his hands into Raleigh’s overlong hair - he hasn’t cut it in a while - and whispers _so good, your mouth feels so good_ , it feels like victory.

He can’t quite swallow everything that Squadron Leader Pentecost gives him, and the excess dribbles down his chin and onto a dark thigh as the older man comes down from the high. A big thumb wipes the corners of his mouth and makes him suck the cum back off again, a murmured order to _clean me up_ following.

And when Raleigh finishes cleaning every spot of seed from Squadron Leader Pentecost’s skin, only then does the order come for him to strip.

It’s just a hand on his cock and a voice in his ear that gets him off that night.

The next, Squadron Leader Pentecost comes back with a small bottle of oil - _olive oil_ , no less - from the chow hall and tells him to take his clothes off.

“Lay back for me, you lovely boy. Let me look at you.”

As Raleigh complies, it occurs to him that he has never heard his benefactor speak his name. N othing. 

He has been nothing for the past year.

Squadron Leader Pentecost calls him pretty as he’s fucking him, as he’s wiping the tears from his face and telling him he’s doing so good. 

And that’s when Raleigh Becket learns a truth about life in these dying times. That you give up only what you don’t mind losing, and even then, only to extract something of greater value from another. Squadron Leader Pentecost can have his virginity, worthless thing that it is. His body earns him gentleness that night, breathless praise, soft touches and enveloping comfort, another _lovely boy_ whispered in his ear. His body buys him ownership, the ownership of a strong man who always makes sure he is fed.

Raleigh is fifteen.

Stacker is almost thirty.

It’s probably a bad thing.

But it’s far from the worst thing happening in Alice Springs.

+++++

The bad things get worse, the Commander increasingly more deranged, to the point where it’s fight or fly.

Stacker chooses both.

When the world started going to shit, he wasn’t surprised. It’s not even really surprising how far people seem to be taking it; the Aussies were always a little insane. What does surprise him is how he, himself, reacts to it. 

What he does.

After coming back from Afghanistan, all the time he spent over there, it’s almost a relief to be back in a war. This one is much worse, of course, the stakes are more dire, but the sensation of _finally, finally_ never quite goes away. He felt it the morning they picked up multiple EMP bursts in the northern hemisphere. He feels it the evening he incites a full-on rebellion in Alice against the Commander.

Three years under this prick, trying to be loyal to his oath as an officer, to his convictions. Morals. Duty.

Fuck it. 

Time to move on.

His hand-picked group of fighters follows him out, taking as many supplies as they can reasonably defend. There’s no dead weight in the group, none at all. Not even his pretty boy, who some of the others bitch about until Luna sets them straight. She showed up about a year back, part of a refugee group out of Adelaide, and Stacker had shot one of his own men to ensure they took her back with them. A mouth for a mouth. She’s harder now, not mean or vicious or cruel, but then, Tamsin fills that quota for the both of them.

“Stacker’s the Marshall now, you all agreed to follow him, and you fucking will! If he says the Yank boy comes, then the Yank boy comes!”

He never did get the lad’s name out of him, before he went silent, and part of Stacker regrets that. But names are changing now, ties to the old world that is not coming back. It’s almost better, not knowing. His boy, in his bed - or bedroll, or sand, or cave, as it seems to be these days now - is something that is of the present. Stacker does teach him to defend himself, one of their number an amateur MMA fighter, and the boy takes to it well. But when offered a choice to go out with the rest on a run, earn his place as a warrior, he always shakes his head and digs deeper in next to his master.

Tamsin starts calling him “Lovely,” and then so does everyone else.

The boy doesn’t seem to mind. 

Wouldn’t matter much if he did. He doesn’t speak, and Stacker is self-aware enough to know he probably wouldn’t listen. There’s something about driving himself into that nubile young body that is just this side of transgressive, mixed in with a desire to protect, the need to possess, to control, to escape...

His Lovely Boy has quite the purpose in their group.

His boy keeps Stacker sane, but only as sane as he can afford to be.

Life is harder out here, nomadic groups of ever-more deranged thugs constantly attacking, no real way to rest, no space to let out a free breath. Their group dwindles and grows, based on who they’re fighting and who’s dying and who can prove their worth to him. There are a few places with water, but precious few with petrol, and that becomes a futile, insane quest; spending petrol to find petrol. 

It would be nice to just settle down, find a defensible place and hold it against the wastes, but Stacker sees what happens to groups like that. The soil is overtaxed and gives out; infighting leads to collapse; the gangs in their twisted metal pursuit vehicles steamroll over it. A few offer Stacker’s group payment - food or petrol or other things - in exchange for their protection, but even now, being a mercenary sticks in Stacker’s craw.

No.

He needs his settlement. His own fortress. He was a good officer once, wasn’t he? And his sister tells him with her dying breath - poisoned by a bleach-soaked arrow, the price of saving little Mako Mori - that he’s still a good man. 

(Tamsin kills herself after that, but that’s not part of Raleigh’s story. He liked her, and mourns her for as long as he can afford, which is only until the ashes go cold on her pyre.)

Luna bade Stacker love their little foundling. It’s the only reason he takes the girl, after all the trouble she’s caused.

Mako can’t speak English, but his lovely boy doesn’t speak at all, and they get along very well once they figure out how to communicate in other ways. What ways, Stacker doesn’t know and doesn’t ask, but it’s a comfort to him, watching the little girl grow. Makes him feel like there can be life in this world yet, a tomorrow that exists beyond today. 

Not quite hope. Less excited, more certain.

The Nullaboor to the south is a complete loss, and the western deserts are even less hospitable than they once were. But there are resources, Stacker knows; oil and metal. Enough for a clever man to use, to rebuild, to stop the insanity. 

Stacker has always hated disorder. The last few years have only intensified that hatred, and with it, his need to impose discipline back on what’s left of the world.

No no. He needs that oil and metal.

So he takes his group there. 

It’s a hard trek. People die. Others go crazy. Some leave without so much as a water bottle, to never be seen again. Others try to take much from the stores, and Stacker has to kill them. Their numbers dwindle. Stacker presses on.

And then a night raid takes his lovely boy.

Which is too fucking... _disrespectful_... to be borne.

+++++

Raleigh doesn’t know what they want, why they keep hurting him, what he can possibly do for them. He can’t see their faces in the darkness - it’s damp and still and hot, underground he knows, but where or how is a mystery - but he does see the flashes of electricity as they burn him, over and over.

Life here is about trading what is less precious for what is more.

So the next time they come, and he’s steady enough to stand, he spreads his legs.

There’s no time in the darkness, so Raleigh doesn’t bother counting off the number of times they rape him, or how.

(Not that he thinks of it as rape - he was barely in high school when the world went insane, and it’s a concept he never really learned about. Sex is something that has always been enacted upon him, not given or shared, and there seems little importance to somebody taking it, even if it makes him ache in ways that not even his Marshall’s huge cock does...did.)

Raleigh gave up on hope a long time ago, and that little faith that he does have was placed on his Marshall, and his Marshall is gone. He has never seen the man go back for anyone. He will die here, he knows, when they’ve had enough of him.

Part of him would like to cry. But it seems more appropriate that his last tears be for his brother, who only saw the beginning of this, who died a good man, never knowing what this world would become, never becoming part of it himself.

Raleigh dreams about his family the next time he falls asleep.

For the last time.

He’s hauled from the darkness by rough, biting hands, thrown up into the surface world, the stars so bright overhead that they hurt his eyes. The dust stings in his wounds. There’s angry talking, voices he can barely make out.

Gunfire.

He passes out.

When he opens his eyes again, he can still smell the stench of his captors’ skin. That ozone taste of them on his tongue. But he’s in what passes for a real bed, under a canopy of leather and canvas, set under what looks like an actual tree. 

It’s their camp, Raleigh realizes.

And the Marshall’s men are tearing it apart.

“Perhaps it’s time we talked about a few things,” the Marshall says, a possessive hand resting on Raleigh’s unburned shoulder. “Like how much it displeases me when others touch you.”

Raleigh whines, and tries to pull the blankets up, suddenly terrified about what will happen to him. He let them touch him - he let them mark him, he let them _fuck_ him. 

“Hush, none of that. You were taken almost two months ago and the battle we lost you in was worse than most. You likely thought me dead, did you not?”

Not knowing what else to do, Raleigh nods. 

“I can’t hold that against you. It’s a logical conclusion and I know you’re a smart boy.”

Raleigh nods again, slow, scared.

“But I do need you now to understand a few things. First,” and his Marshall runs a hand down his side, “that you gave this fine body of yours to me freely, that is gives me much pleasure, and I should very much like to keep such a pretty thing close. I shall always come back for it.”

The knot in his chest starts to unravel - Raleigh just keeps nodding.

“Second, that it’s your responsibility to ensure that your body is mine alone. You are never again to allow anyone to touch you without my express permission, do you understand?” His Marshall shuffles a little closer, voice impossibly gentle. “These scars you now carry, I did not put them on you. I need to fix it, so they are my marks and nobody else’s. It will hurt, I’m afraid, but you’re a brave boy. You’ll be brave for me, won’t you?”

Raleigh blinks up at him, fearful, and his Marshall touches his chest. 

“You are mine, lovely boy, and I do not cast aside what is mine, even if it returns to me broken. So be brave. You’ll be coming with us when we leave this blasted place.”

It burns worse than before, when his Marshall wheels in a small device that smells like the pit, and does what he must to correct Raleigh’s mistakes. The pain is freeing; it strips away his guilt and worry and fears. The pain is his master telling him who he is. 

Raleigh kisses his master’s hand when it’s done.

His master chuckles, and calls him a lovely boy again.

They stay there another five days, Raleigh’s wounds closing as the settlement is stripped of anything useful, before heading north again, and west. He rides in his master’s war rig as they leave, naked between his master’s knees, Mako at the wheel, and feels utterly at peace. 

Raleigh is twenty.

Breaking him is hardly the worst thing Stacker Pentecost has done or will do. In a way, it’s one of the most merciful.

+++++

When Raleigh is twenty-two, they reach what’s left of Broome.

Somebody, at some point, found great sport in setting the entire city on fire, or perhaps that was air raids by some other nation, or natural disaster, or a hundred other things that nobody really cares to understand. There is still decent soil in the city, gardens and parks laying fallow for years, and there is no radiation.

Stacker’s favorite new acquisitions, Gottlieb - a man he pulled from a mining pit a few hours to the east, a Brit, like himself, who had the misfortune to be on a lecture circuit when everything went to shit - and Geiszler - an American marine biologist who was studying whale sharks off the coast of Perth - are able to confirm as much. They were well worth the petrol and lives spent on storming their former master’s stronghold.

Stacker can’t honestly tell if Gottlieb and Geiszler have always been insane, or if it’s the last half-decade or so that’s turned them into, well, what they are. They bicker endlessly about even the most inane bullshit, can’t fight, eat too much, and generally behave like overgrown children. He’s not the first warlord to find them unbearably exasperating; Geiszler’s arms were both taken off at the elbow at some point for some reason that he never speaks of, while Gottlieb has ruined legs and something like severe ataxia - brain damage. Man can write just fine, but he can’t verbalize a coherent sentence to save his life, which makes their arguments that much more aggravating.

They’re both still brilliant, though, and Stacker needs them for his plans, so he leaves them be. 

(Even if Mako, who’s helping Gottlieb design a pair of hands for Geiszler, comes back from their lab space one fine morning and asks Stacker about sex. “It looks pleasurable, father,” she says, and smiles at him. “Could you and I do such a thing?” His scientists aren’t exactly subtle about what they do together, but then, Stacker does have a boy who all but lives to suck his cock, so he can’t exactly hold it against them. So he expands his lovely boy’s role to pleasuring Mako as well, with strict orders not to seed her - her womb, Stacker decided long ago, is his alone to fill.)

But regardless of the details of who’s fucking who in his camp, everything appears to be in place. Himself poised to change things for the better. No more wastelands, no more horror. He can bring order back to the world.

He’s a good man. His dying sister told him so.

And with that in mind, Stacker sets to work.

+++++

Raleigh doesn’t like the two men who show up with the bulldog and the tricked-out Humvee. They make him nervous; he can almost smell the blood on their hands. Killers both, and not in the way his master is a killer, oh no. His master wants to make a better world for them all. These two revel in the chaos, caring only about themselves.

Raleigh especially doesn’t like the younger of the pair. Vicious, he is, arrogant. His father maybe have been a sergeant in the old days, the days Raleigh can barely recall now, but the father has allowed the son to become feral. It makes Raleigh proud, knowing his master has taught him to be such a good, disciplined boy. Has trained him so thoroughly. 

(These days, it should be mentioned, Raleigh’s memories consist mostly of his master’s body, the taste of his skin and the feel of his cock, the mindless pleasure of orgasm, which he is allowed on the nights when he’s a very good boy... hell, he can barely remember his own name. He’s a slave, and the best slaves have always loved their masters to the point of death, and Raleigh decided, the morning after Stacker marked him, that he would be the very best slave a boy could be.) 

After meeting them, Raleigh is surprised that they responded to the short-wave broadcasts, asking for former soldiers, at all. But his master is pleased, so pleased, that they have come. Civilization, he says, is always defended by armies, by soldiers, and right now, that’s the one thing they don’t have.

“Make Sergeant Hansen happy for me,” his master tells him, and pets his cheek. “Make him forget everything but our Shatterdome.”

Raleigh tries to be a good boy for the Sergeant too. Tries so hard. But the younger one treats him with such contempt, such rage, that it’s impossible not to drop the little shit and show him exactly, _exactly_ , what this slave boy can do.

Then the Sergeant threatens to kill him, and then the Sergeant decides they’ll share him, and Raleigh puts everything he can into pleasing them both. He’s good at this, a good boy, the Marshall’s prized possession.

They both seem appropriated satiated when he leaves their bed, entwined in each other’s arms, lazily kissing. Raleigh watches for a moment, entranced - he hasn’t seen a kiss in a long time. He’s forgotten about such things (he’s forgotten about the time he tried to kiss his master all those years ago). And there’s such tenderness in it, such love...

The Sergeant catches him watching, hands frozen on his garment, and snorts. “Leave that here, boy. I wanna have a talk with your master about this, and I know you can’t carry the words for me.”

Raleigh has thought nothing of nudity for a long time now - his body is not his own, after all - but it’s always his master who gives the order to display it. He’s torn for a moment, but thinks about their guns and their threats of death, and lets the cloth fall again.

He lets Mako know they are fucking, the Hansen father and son, a few little hand signs they made for each other long ago, and she tells his master, and not an hour later, his master fucks him so hard he can’t so much as sit up afterward. 

Not that he needs to.

Raleigh lays panting in his master’s bed, his master’s cum dribbling down his thighs and his own across his belly as his master works two fingers into his painfully abused hole, mercilessly working his prostate, milking every last drop of cum from his balls. It’s the same thing his master does after Mako takes him. A mark of ownership, maybe. Raleigh doesn’t know. He can’t think much at all right now, lost in the static.

All he knows is that he’s grateful.

He’s so grateful for what he’s allowed to be.


End file.
